On July 4th, 2006, I embarked on a quest to become the pre-eminent American portrait painter of the 21st century. This blog chronicles that journey. With apologies to Joan Didion, I call it THE YEAR OF MAGICAL PAINTING.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

It's 10:45 pm...

It's 10:45 pm, Monday night.

Actually no. It's that interval of time so brief as to be unmeasurable by modern technology that falls between 10:45 and quarter of eleven. I'm here to tell you, you could fit more angels on the head of a pin. Whatever that has to do with anything.

Anyway, so here I am, in that briefest of timespans, having one of those moments of clarity that you sometimes have while your car, for example, is hurtling off the side of a cliff or you realize you've stopped your bike in time to save the life of a small child but you have neglected to pull your feet out of the pedal clips and you, in a moment of clarity, mid-plummet, say to yourself, "Man, this is going to hurt."

Anyway, so I'm having one of those moments of clarity. No reason, really. But still, all I can think about is Captain Ahab--the guy from Moby Dick. My mind is racing with questions. Did, for example, he, once strapped to the white whale, recognize that the curve of the whale's flank exactly matched the curvature of the Earth? Did he, once strapped to the whale, reflect on what he took to be its perfect whiteness, the color of a New England meadow in the middle of a cold winter, when, in fact, the whale, like all of us, was not perfectly white but had, rather, it's own differentiating characteristics--scars from battle, the lines and scrapes that come from life in the briney deep? Was he wise enough to realize that it was, in fact, those very myriad scars and markings that made the whale perfect? Or that, if we could wax slightly more philosophic, were the whale truly perfect, it could not, in fact, exist on Earth but only, rather, in Heaven and that, like potters in the Ming Period, its imperfections would be the vehicle for its suitability in this imperfect world? Did he ponder the question of perfection in a man's eye versus perfection in God's eye (which would, as I am sure you can guess, be limited to Himself, His Son, and the Holy Spirit)? Did he gaze on what he took to be this perfect whiteness and reflect that he, a man with only one leg, was, perhaps, unworthy? The notion of narrative parallelism makes one also wonder if, perhaps, it was the very absenceof his leg that, in fact, madehim worthy of the whale. Or did he, once strapped to the whale, instead, somewhat disintuitively, think to himself, "Manomanoman, this whale is off the charts. I am so getting lucky"?

What are you? Like paid by the comma? Would it kill you to throw down one simple declarative sentence?

Was the whale warmer than he thought? Softer? Harder? Both at the same time? Yowza. Did he, when he held his harpoon aloft...

Wait. Wait a minute.What?The harpoon's a metaphor, right?Everything's a metaphor in Moby Dick. That's half the fun.Manoman, you write a complicate blogYou don't know the half.

Did he, when he held his harpoon aloft, think of Bernini's famous sculpture, titled "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa", housed in the Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome?

Why would he think of that?Well, it's widely considered one of the masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque era.Why on Earth would a one-legged New England ship captain who was strapped to the back of the whale he's been hunting for years think of some stupid sculpture in Rome?Well... it's a metaphor.Everything in Moby Dick is a metaphor. What's what makes it fun.Exactly.

Did he think, once strapped to the white whale, that the years of the hunt were worth it? That he, like that famous Rangers fan with the sign that read "Now I can die in peace," felt that he had, in fact, come home?

Well...did he?The short answer is yes.Do you worry about...About what?About people saying this is one of the weirder than normal posts?Nah. That shit doesn't bother me.Really?Nah. I pay some sixteen year old to do this. It's really all his thing.He must be hooked into some outstanding weed.He does have his moments, I'll say that. But what's with all that pig lard and knives business?